On June the 3rd, the NWP Bedford writing group looked at two ideas: endowing the common-place with power (Raymond Carver ‘On Writing’: 1981), and attending to characters’ distinctive speech (Flannery O’Connor ‘Writing Short Stories’: 1957).

First we each called to mind those people familiar to us, and tried to hear their voices again inside our heads. What had they said recently? What were their ‘catch-phrases’? What circumstances brought about their distinctive language use? What about the accompanying intonations, gestures and pregnant pauses?

It’s the kind of straight-forward exercise that could be easily adapted to any classroom, so I’ll describe it here in more detail.

Here are the phrases – with examples of some of the possible inferences that were drawn. The more varied and contentious were the interpretations, the more they served to illustrate the extraordinary 'layering' of the ordinary. (Socrates: ὁ ... ἀνεξέταστος βίος οὐ βιωτὸς ἀνθρώπῳ - ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’)

Grandson: ‘You know what?’ (meaning: ‘I am about to tell you something which interests me more than it will interest you.’)

Teenager: ‘Don’t start!’ (meaning: ‘I already know what you are going to say and I don’t like it.’)

Teenager: ‘Stop having a go at me!’ (meaning: ‘your polite suggestion disguises the fact that we are from different generations and have fundamentally different priorities’)

Friend: ‘I’m not being nasty, but ...’ ( meaning: ‘if I preface my remarks with this phrase, I might still be able to protect our friendship which might be broken by my honesty – or, I can now say something really hurtful and you can’t do anything about it – or, I don’t even have to finish the sentence.’)

Teacher: ‘Right then!’ (meaning: ‘I need to move things on, so I’ll suggest that we’ve reached a degree of accord, but really I wish everyone would just shut up and give me back control.’)

Teenager:Shrugged shoulders (meaning: ‘as long as I don’t speak, I haven’t admitted liability for the broken crockery.’)

Parent: ‘Be that as it may ...’ (meaning: ‘I accept that conversation requires you to have a turn, but I despise your point of view.’)

Mum: Whispering under breath (meaning: ‘I can’t suppress my frustration and I’ll make you go out of your way to find out why you annoy me – and even then I may never tell you.’)

Colleague: ‘Just surviving.’ (meaning: ‘You’ve kindly asked me how I am but I want to bond with you in the miserable assumption that life is one long bleak struggle, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’)

These ‘meanings’ are just examples of some of the ‘readings’ that emerged in discussion. But in our writing we tried to ‘show’ rather than ‘tell’, mindful of Raymond Carver’s observations about tension in fiction:

‘What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it’s also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.’ Carver p26

Then we used some of these phrases as sounding-boards for our own writing. We searched for the stories they contained. What emerged derived its power partly from restraint, from focusing on those unspoken, surrounding details of conversation which can excite interpretation rather than explain meaning. This kind of writing exercise rewards close observation and illustrates Flannery O’Connor’s philosophical thoughts in ‘The Nature and Aim of Fiction’:

‘The fact is that anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days. If you can’t make something out of a little experience, you probably won’t be able to make it out of a lot. The writer’s business is to contemplate experience, not to be merged in it.’ O’Connor p84

Such exercises can be effective antidotes to the multitude of intimidating advice which suggests that not everyone has it in them to write effectively. As Ron Carter said, ‘Creativity is not a property of exceptional people, it is the exceptional property of all people.’